In what could turn out to be a major security headache for the Indian security establishment as well as for the Maldives Government, Pakistan is sending a team of 200 doctors to that country ostensibly to fuel anti-India sentiment and help forces which are trying to destabilise the India-friendly Government there.
Cyber profiling of these doctors and inputs with the agencies here suggest they have been in regular touch with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and its affiliate terror groups like the lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. For the last few months, these doctors have been scouring the Internet to understand the Maldivian culture in-depth so as to gel well with the local people there and vitiate their minds. The Pakistani agencies have also imparted training to these doctors on the cultural milieu of the island nation, sources said.
Inputs also suggest 80 per cent of these doctors have studied medicine at the medical institutions of the armed forces of Pakistan and many of them have also served for the uniformed services.
Agencies here suspect these doctors are being sent with an insidious agenda to foment anti-India sentiment in the island nation and stage a coup against the pro-India Government there.
Incidentally, India’s radar facility for monitoring the Indian Ocean there is the second-biggest after the US and it is providing surveillance capacity right up to Gwadar Port in Pakistan.
In the past, many Maldivian students who had gone to Pakistan to study medicine were radicalised by the Pakistani agencies. Many of these students had joined terror groups following which the Maldives Government banned its students from studying in Pakistan. Interestingly, Pakistan had earlier offered similar help to Nepal during the earthquake but the Himalayan nation had rejected the offer outright saying the people might not accept medical services from Pakistani doctors due to cultural differences.
As many as 150 Indian doctors are already stationed in the country that has a population of ten lakh spread across 200 islands. The ratio of doctors is well above the WHO recommendations for a population of ten lakh and the Pakistani move seems to be fishy as they will stay there for two years and each one of them will draw a monthly salary of $2,500 and the entire bill will be footed by Islamabad. The Maldives Government has already granted them visas and they are likely to reach there after the Eid vacations in both the countries are over by the weekend.
“The background of the doctors and the track record of Pakistani agencies suggest an armed coup is a possibility in Maldives if they are allowed to stay for long. Their activities could add to the woes of the Government there as radicalisation by the ISIS is on the rise there,” an official said.
In the past, the ISI and its affiliate terror groups had created a network of sympathising groups within the Muslim sections in Sri lanka after undertaking humanitarian works there following the tsunami in 2004.
Recently, the role of ISI had also cropped up in the terror attack on a restaurant in an upscale area in Dhaka.
Counter-terrorsim expert Rituraj Mate told The Pioneer, “While China is undertaking String of Pearls to encircle India in strategic terms, Pakistan is carrying out an operation on similar lines to hit New Delhi’s interests by furthering jehadi agenda in the immediate neighbourhood of India.”